Behold the Future Cyborg

Here’s a two-and-a-half year old girl who picks up an iPad for the first time and immediately begins using it. No particular sign of confusion, no hesitation. She just starts making Apply gestures all over it, and before long, with minimal instruction, she’s playing games.

To quote Kerouac, “What will happen?”

There’s such an intimate relationship with information and its manipulation on display here, an intimacy with information — a tactile intimacy — unimaginable even twenty years ago. I’m not a singularity freak, but this is what it looks like as it approaches.

(note: not an ad for the iPad here. I am baffled by the very existence of the device. I’m just intrigued by the fact that babies are practically born with technology in their hands)

One Response to “Behold the Future Cyborg”

This isn’t a new phenomenon. 16 years ago, we got a new VCR (back when there were things such as VCRs). It was the then 2 year old who figured out how to use it. Children of that age seem to have a remarkable plasticity of mind and little to no fear of technology-they simply don’t know that using this stuff is supposed to be complicated.